


someone out there (just like me)

by orphan_account



Category: Twenty One Pilots
Genre: Illness, M/M, josh dun - Freeform, joshler - Freeform, sad josher, twenty one pilots - Freeform, tyler joseph - Freeform, tøp - Freeform
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-04-17
Updated: 2016-04-17
Packaged: 2018-06-02 17:04:47
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,194
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6574603
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>sad, sad fic set in england, tyler is astronomically intelligent, and his only, treasured aspiration is to go to space. he and his best friend can't wait to get out of this grimy, ugly little catholic village where everyone seems to hate them.</p>
            </blockquote>





	someone out there (just like me)

for some reason, tyler wakes up cold every morning, and with an unbearable, throbbing pain in the side of his head, just above his left hand ear. every day begins with agony, but, in a weird sort of way, it’s routine, and tyler knows it well enough to be able to grit his teeth, roll over and slap his alarm, squinting at the blinking red dots for a moment before dragging himself out of his warmish pit, and immediately making the bed perfectly. it has to be perfect. every morning.  
then, he stops for a moment to admire not only his perfect bedsheets, but the self customisation of his bedroom wall, pasted with thousands of cut outs from astronomy now magazine, riddled with stars and nebulae and various interesting articles, he could get lost looking at it all day as he stands shirtless in his grey tracksuit bottoms at the foot of his bed, but time is of the essence and he must fold his pants away, place them in their drawer and have his shower. every morning.  
while in the shower, tyler contemplates his future. he has everything planned out, own to a tee. he ignores the pain in his left side brain, and busies himself with what he will do. he will.  
he will get the best possible grades at the school he is attending. his a levels in all three sciences and further mathematics, all a*s. he knows he is capable. then he, will go to university, he will get his PhD in astronomical physics, he will be honoured. he will to the usa, and he will live in a small flat, he will definitely make it into nasa and achieve his dream. he will be an astronaut. he will.  
tyler adores space, and everything related to it, and he cannot wait to get there. away from the earth, away from the people, away from this town, away from his family, away from his problems. and with that in mind, a head so filled with stars and differential equations and knowledge that there was not much room for anything else in there, he skips breakfast, swallows a paracetamol to numb the ache of his skull and heads to his school before his parents or siblings have even stirred, at 6:15 am.

tyler doesn’t mind school so much. he knows that is not a social normality, however, and so keeps it to himself. tyler’s school was okay. it was not a necessarily good school, but he got by. his intellect could aspire no matter where he was, even in a school so mediocre as his own. everyone there knew he was clever, and most were indifferent to it. nearly everything in the school was indifferent, bland, like tyler’s days. one thing stood out, however, during the day. the school tyler attended was a strict catholic boy’s school, and so prayer was mandatory twice a day within the stark, cold bricks of the chapel on the furthest west wing. tyler despised this activity more than almost anything else on the planet. he would rather have one of his worse headaches, the ones that completely immobilise him until he has had a paracetamol, the ones that usually come after a night of poor judgement, everyday for a week rather than experience prayer. god had always conflicted tyler. he did not believe in a higher purpose or a heaven or a hell or angels or demons or whatever, but god knows, he wanted to. he wanted to fit in with his family, he wanted people to understand. but nobody did, save for his best friend, joshua.  
joshua was another boy of fifteen, whose smile caused his chocolate button eyes to sparkle and crinkle, hiding the dark purple bags beneath them. despite everyone’s efforts, he had made the bold decision not only to go with a brazen haircut, but to dye the shock of fluff an iridescent shade of bright, bright pink. the school only let him get away with it because they had given up completely on him. he shared many of the same beliefs as tyler, and, much to the dismay of many of tyler’s devout catholic “friends” he and tyler were constantly by the other’s side. josh, too, harboured a deep rooted doubt for the existence of a greater being. somethings he'd been taught conflicted with his beliefs, resonating within him with a sickening feeling that he was doing something wrong, something terrible. and he full well knew what that thing was.

josh made his way into the school building, and found his way up the left wing stairs to tyler's form room. seeing a figure, shrouded by the gloom, with only the face illuminated by the dim light of an electronic screen. josh flicked the light on, and with slow, reluctant hesitation, the stark light of an ancient bulb filled the room.  
startled, tyler looked up, shoving his phone into his blazer pocket and tearing the headphones from his ears. but upon seeing his best friend, the fear in his eyes dissipated, and his gaze softened gently.

"josh, do us a favour and turn it off again, will you? the headache is back early," tyler spluttered. josh worried about his friend dearly, and not only immediately plunged the room back into darkness, but scrabbled about in his pockets and eventually found some paracetamol, pressing the medication into tyler's palm as he slid down the wall next to his counterpart.  
"you really need to get that checked out, lanky arse," he said, poking tyler softly in the ribcage, in response to which the other boy lay his head on his shoulder with a sigh.  
"yeah, yeah, you tell me every morning, nosering."  
"what've you got first?"  
"physics, thank fuck."  
"yeah"  
"yeah"  
after twenty minutes of friendly banter and general conversation, josh must head to his own form room, and face his awful day ahead. he sighs and places his hand on the warm part of his shoulder where tyler's head had lay.

tyler walks home with his head down, hands in pockets, earphones in, kicking a tiny stone on his way up the massive rural hill to his home. the village was small and everyone except for he and josh appeared to be a devout catholic, everyone the same except for them. tyler longed to fit in, but the boy who seemed to be his only friend in the world did not. tyler admired that about josh. in fact, he admired everything about josh, and he counted all the things he loved as he drifted off to sleep.but as he did so, as the word ‘josh’ reverberated around his mind, he felt perverse and unclean, and more out of place than ever before. 

four streets away, josh was feeling exactly the same. he can't let this one go because he knows tyler is having more than just a migraine every morning, he know that it's something much, much worse and he know that he needs to get through to him. he tosses and turns for the entire night, wondering what is going on to make his tyler hurt so much


End file.
